HOW MUCH # 2...

In an earlier post I talked about the enormous figures being used nowadays to describe the global economy - tongue in cheek but as with most humour, an element of truth lies within.

Well, I heard a news report yesterday concerning America's "Debt Clock". This is a clock that records America's current debt level (which is so large it's almost incomprehensible...).

The current debt has reached such epic proportions that a digit space has had to be added to the already 14 spaces currently in use. I only saw a flash image of the clock so don't know if they display the cent figure, i.e. two more digit spaces after a digital point. One would understand if it was considered pointless - much like the fazing out of the diminutive "penny", or one cent. These figures, ironically, so tiny that they become effectively unusable - but for the sake of accuracy, they might remain pertinent.
Regardless, it's "the other end" of the fantastic figure that concerns this post.

And with this new space comes a new title for yet another level of numeracy.

"Quadrillion", apparently. I have no idea exactly what this "number" represents but as the previous highest was a trillion, and in maths quad represents four...

Mind you, current logic jumps a level, instead of a thousand million it's a billion so by that logic, a thousand trillion would be, what, this new quadrillion?

So for example, 4 thousand trillion would be 4 quadrillion.

See what I mean? When one speaks in this almost foreign tongue, the amounts represented are just "silly money" as they might say. Monopoly-like figures that have in part lost their meaning.

What's next? After quadrillion?